I read this morning that Congress has voted to let President Bush attack Iraq. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I suspect that even if we win, and win quickly, it will likely accomplish only two things: cement other countries’ view of us as a bully (the satirists at The Onion have a great article on that subject), and ensure that new middle-east-based terrorists will be gunning for us for a really long time.
Maybe I’m cynical, but I just haven’t seen much to be optimistic about lately.
Saw the nearby KFC has a poster advertising a “Hot & Fresh Breast Meal.”
The last time I saw something using the words “hot,” “fresh,” and “breast” in such close proximity, it had a spam score of about 20.
Given that most of us think we are above-average drivers, you’d think people wouldn’t expect other drivers to be telepathic.
Turn signals prevent other drivers from hitting you! (Or at least reduce the chances of it.)
I am amazed time and time again as I see people driving shiny new Mercedes, Lexuses (Lexi?), and BMWs dodging in and out of traffic without signalling, trusting those below-average other drivers to have above-average reflexes and precognitive abilities.
It’s a strange feeling, when someone you live with gets sick, and you know, just know that in a week, two weeks at the most, you’re next. I’m not looking forward to coughing, sneezing, and living on Ny-Quil, although spending the day in bed sounds nice…
J. Gregory Keyes has fast become one of those authors whose work I will pick up knowing nothing more than who wrote it. I enjoyed his work in the Babylon 5 and Star Wars universes, but after reading the four novels of The Age of Unreason and these two, I can say I’ll definitely be picking up The Briar King when it comes out in January.
Now, The Age of Unreason is probably Keyes’ most well-known work to date. (If the title doesn’t sound familiar, chances are you’ve heard of the first novel, Newton’s Cannon). It takes place in an alternate Eighteenth Century in which Isaac Newton discovered the key to alchemy, transforming the world with new technology… and setting off an arms race of sorts. What begins as an alternate history becomes an epic battle for the future of the world, and ultimately of humanity itself.
While I’d recommend someone curious about Keyes’ writing start with Newton’s Cannon, I’d like to call attention to his earliest published novels, The Waterborn and The Blackgod, collectively known as The Chosen of the Changeling.
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For a while now I’ve been thinking of setting up something where I can just post random thoughts or opinion pieces without taking the time to write an HTML page and update bunches of links. Some sort of blogging software seemed ideal, so I looked at a few, noticed they all seemed to use MySQL, and left it for a while.
Well, I moved the site to a Linux server a few weeks ago, and so I started looking again. And since Katie’s site is currently under the same domain name, we both figured it would be cool to have something we could both post to.
I settled on b2 (shortly before the site ran out of bandwidth), mainly because it was simple, it used PHP, and it allowed me to set up more than one user.
Welcome to Ramblings!
